


Paradigm Shift

by happygiraffe



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Leia Princess of Alderaan - Claudia Gray
Genre: Badass ladies in the wilderness, Banter, Bisexual Leia, F/F, Mild hurt/comfort but tbh it's mostly banter, Pathfinding, cuTIEPIES, frequent changes in hair color
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 01:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21639202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happygiraffe/pseuds/happygiraffe
Summary: There was something poetic about their misfortune, and the rain, the mud, the injury. Something that one could find in a cheesy holovid, if one liked that sort of thing. Leia did not.
Relationships: Amilyn Holdo/Leia Organa
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs Exchange 2019





	Paradigm Shift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [buckstiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckstiel/gifts).



> Happy Rarepair Reveal day! Thanks to buckstiel for the choice of ship, I hope you enjoy!

On her way down, Leia saw a flash of acid green.

She managed to grab hold of a wide tree root to stop her tumble down the muddy ravine. A half second later, she heard a harsh thud.

“Are you hurt?” she called downwards.

“Are you kidding? That was fun!” Amilyn giggled as she replied, and her hair bounced along. It was the color of the sunlight on the leaves in the tree canopy of Chandrila, and Leia saw it reflected in the glittery tape that covered her field generator, which had broken her fall.

Leia could think of a lot of words other than fun. She almost could have missed the icy terrain of their first pathfinding lesson, because at least then the cleats on their boots had given them reliable purchase. This mountain was steep, and its boulders were slippery, mud running down around them in little rivers and pools. She wasn’t sure which one of them had slipped first, only that the other had tried to grab on, and been dragged down.

She got to her feet.

Amilyn was about ten feet further down the slope of the ravine, sitting against a boulder in a puddle of mud, seemingly unconcerned with the rainwater soaking into her clothes. Leia held on carefully to steady branches as she climbed down towards her.

“I suppose this is one way to get closer to nature,” Holdo said brightly as freed a strand of fern from her hair and twirled it between her fingers. Leia noticed that her right foot was covered only by a sock.

“What happened to your boot?”

Amilyn shrugged. “It got stuck in the mud up there. I tried to unstick it, and my foot came out instead and I fell over.”

So the mystery of who had pulled who down the mountain was evidently solved. Leia huffed. “There’s no chance we can get back up this way,” she reasoned, gesturing up the sheer slope. “There’s supposed to be a bridge along the trail. I bet it goes over this river. If we follow the bank, we’ll have to meet up with the trail eventually.”

“Good plan, Princess,” Amilyn quipped, and there was something about the way she used the honorific that was irreverent without being aggressive.

She winced slightly as she stood up. It was subtle, but Leia didn’t miss it.

“You _are_ injured,” Leia said.

“It isn’t important,” Amilyn insisted.

They followed Leia’s plan, marching along the river bank, until Leia’s hair was soaked and coming out of its painstakingly-woven updo. Amilyn didn’t seem to have any trouble keeping up, even with the lack of a shoe – the one time she had paused, Leia had turned around, concerned, and saw her plucking a salamander out of a mud puddle. She placed the small creature on her shoulder and continued on.

The salamander rode along with them for several miles after that, until the sun started to sink towards the horizon in early afternoon. They finally reached the trail and the bridge over the stream, but the other students were nowhere in sight.

“Do you suppose the others have made their way back by now?”

“Probably,” Leia huffed. There would be no sledding to victory this time. They would likely come in dead last for this mission, if they weren’t kicked out of the class entirely. “Oh stars, Holdo!”

As she glanced over her shoulder, Leia noticed the rusty red stain that began over a tear in the knee of Amilyn’s cargo pants and dripped down towards the socked foot. It hadn’t looked so bad, blending in with the mud at first, but the downpouring rain had washed most of the grime away.

“Go on,” Amilyn gestured for her to keep moving like one might shoo a bothersome tooka.

“Shouldn’t we at least bind that up?”

“With what supplies?”

Leia took her by the sleeve and led her down to the corner of the ban beneath the bridge, where they were at least somewhat sheltered from the rain.

“Sit down,” she ordered, as if she expected nothing less than obedience.

“Yes ma’am.”

Leia tore the inner lining out of her ruined jacket, and began rolling up the loose cuff of Amilyn’s pants.

“Don’t you think we should start with caf?” she smirked. “Maybe dinner?”

“Maybe if you’re buying,” Leia grunted, ignoring the implication. She used the fabric to put pressure on the wound, although it wasn’t as deep as it had looked.

“I was wrong about you,” Amilyn said

“Oh yes?”

“You’re a good leader, and smart, the whole class has seen that. But I wasn’t sure if you were the kind of princess who would get her hands covered in mud and blood.”

“How stereotypical of you.”

“Isn’t my fault,” Amilyn shrugged.

…

_“I’m thinking an amber-y orange next. Want to do it with me?”_

_Leia stared._

_“I didn’t mean that we should match. That would be bizarre. Pick your own crazy color if you want.”_

_Leia sat up straighter. Sure, there was no stipulation about the color of an Alderaanian monarch’s hair—only that it be done up in braids for formal events. But it wasn’t about the letter of the rule, rather the spirit. Leia’s braids were her culture, and although she couldn’t do them herself as nicely as her father or Aunt Tia always had, she was proud of them. The Organa clan wasn’t a family she had been born into, but that she had chosen. She chose it anew each time she sewed the elaborate buns together._

_“Alright, it doesn’t have to be the hair specifically,” Holdo backpedaled as she seemed to read Leia’s face. “But you could stand to let loose a little. While we’re off duty, of course.”_

_“I don’t want to let loose with those people. They could likely be colleagues one day. And it’ll be my job to protect my home, and try to steer the Senate away from…”_

_Amilyn nodded. She knew. Leia hadn’t confided anything confidential to her, but she seemed to know anyway that the Emperor was no friend to Alderaan._

_“Aren’t I one of those people?”_

_“You don’t count,” said Leia, although she wasn’t sure why._

…

Until now, Leia’s only impression had been that the girl from Gatalenta was bizarre. She never said exactly what she meant, and stars’ sake, she had spent most of their first pathfinding mission climbing up trees to peer into strange holes, rattling off facts about snowy owls.

And it _was_ kind of her fault that they were about to lose the race. Leia tied off the makeshift bandage and sat back on a rock. Amilyn's salamander friend watched from the side pocket of her rucksack, bobbing his little head. The supporting evidence for that first impression was fairly damning, but Leia could hardly say so after she'd just rebuked Holdo's own first impression of her.

“Hey,”

While Leia’s thoughts wandered, Holdo had been trying to get her attention.

“Thanks for sticking around.”

A million reasons came to her mind, _can’t let it be said that the princess of Alderaan left a comrade behind, like Kier had said, she had to keep up appearances and all that._ She didn’t know why she suddenly wanted to hide behind those excuses.

Leia shrugged. “Whenever you’re ready. We might still make it before sundown. I don’t want to get booted out of the class because of you.”

Amilyn got to her feet, testing out the flexion of the bandage just below her knee. Before Leia turned to climb back up the bank and cross the bridge, Amilyn leaned over and planted a quick kiss on her cheek.

…

_Her hair was the color of the horizon then, indigo at the roots and growing more purple as the ringlets gathered at her shoulders._

_They sat on the balcony overlooking Coruscant. Leia had little love for the city as a whole, but it was fun to watch the lights from lanes and lanes of airtraffic twinkle in between the skyscrapers, against the backdrop of the sky that matched Amilyn’s curls._

_“Wasn’t it eye-opening?” Amilyn asked. “For me there was this big moment, this oh, so that’s what it’s supposed to feel like when you’re attracted to someone. It was like I’d willed myself into feeling some fake attraction before, and I didn’t even realize that it was a shadow of the real thing. But the first time I kissed a girl…did you feel that?”_

_Leia shook her head at Holdo’s bluntness, not for the first time. “What makes you assume you were my first?” she countered, mostly to buy herself time to think._

_“Was I?”_

_“Yes,” Leia admitted._

_She thought about Jahan Cross, and more recently, Kier. “I don’t think it was fake for me. I think I like guys too.”_

_Amilyn nodded. If she was disappointed—which, if she was, Leia was already gathering herself to be indignant—she didn’t say anything._

_“But there was a moment,” Leia conceded. “Not like yours. But there was a moment where I knew it was_ you _.”_

…

There was something poetic about their misfortune, and the rain, the mud, the injury. Something that one could find in a cheesy holovid, if one liked that sort of thing. Leia did not.

They stopped to rest one more time, when spots of blood started to seep through the makeshift bandage, and Amilyn’s pain tolerance was nearing its end. They weren’t frightened of the setting sun, knowing that the instructor would use their field trackers to find collect them if they failed the mission. But neither of them were accustomed to failure.

“Stop it, Leia, there’s no time.”

“Give me one second to tie this,” Leia growled, matching her impatience.

“We’re not going to make it. I thought you cared about this class—isn’t it some kind of ritual that you have to complete?”

“Maybe they won’t kick us out for failing this one. The rainstorm was hardly anyone’s fault.”

“Why the sudden change in attitude?” The question was pointed, and it hit its mark.

Holdo never said exactly what she meant, except when Leia absolutely did not want her to. Which was just typical, really.

Because the answer, which burst forth in Leia’s mind like a clap of thunder, was _you_. Because it’s _you_.

Amilyn evidently was not expecting Leia to kiss her, but she kissed back without missing a beat, despite the rain mixed with sweat on their faces. Holdo leaned in and Leia’s back rested against a wide tree trunk. The kiss ended too soon, and Leia leaned her head back to thud softly against the tree trunk, realizing for better or for worse that Amilyn karking Holdo, with one boot and one salamander and the worst mix of curiosity and irreverence known to humankind, it’s _you_.


End file.
